Moon and stars few female flowers

jtuck2 7/14/2014, 11:03 pm

I reserved a whole 3x8 bed for 3 moon and stars watermelon plants. I'm getting a LOT of male flowers but rarely any females. I am hand pollinating because the bees aren't buzzing so well this year, but I only have 3 Moon & Stars melons right now. Most of them just aren't taking.

Is there anything I can do about this? I love watermelon. I don't believe I am over watering because my sprinkler system for that zone is broken. The soil is just a little damp around the main root.

Thank you!

Marc Iverson 7/15/2014, 1:15 am

Are they not taking, or just not producing many melons?

Re looking for possible solutions, how rich in nitrogen is your soil? If it's too high, your plant will put out a lot of green growth, nice and tender and rich vibrant green and bug-vulnerable, but fruit set may be delayed and overall unusually low. Did you amend or fertilize heavily, or build a particularly rich soil/growing medium?

And how many hours a day of sun are you getting? That's critical too, and can affect productivity even on very healthy-looking plants.

**sanderson** 7/15/2014, 2:26 am

Hand pollinating cantaloupes and cucumbers can be hard to do because the flowers are so small, but I guess you have had some experience. On mine, there are abundant males but only a few females.

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Moon and stars few female flowers

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